The Cole Memo

In this episode, I speak with Shaleen Title about two papers that the Parabola Center just released. We also discuss the topic of Hash Wednesday.

You can read “How to Federally Legalize Cannabis Without Violating the Constitution or Undermining Equity and Justice (2023, a Parabola Center project by Tamar Todd)” right here

You can read “The Role of Small Business in the Evolving Cannabis Industry (2023 by Shaleen Title and Bruce Barcott, The Ohio State University Drug Enforcement and Policy Center)” right here

From what I’ve been able to tell, Hash Wednesday started sometime in the 70s. What is Hash Wednesday? According to the NewsGazette: “With the click of a lighter, Hash Wednesday was born on the University of Illinois Quad in 1977. It was modeled after other “hash bashes,” particularly the one in Ann Arbor, Mich., which supported reform of marijuana laws, according to co-founder Mitch Altman.”

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this is the Cole memo I’m your host Cole Preston every episode is released in audio video and transcript format to find the audio video or transcript version of any episode please refer to the description of the episode that you’re listening to now within that description you can find a link that will take you to our website which will display the transcript for this episode and the platforms where you can find this episode in audio or video formats if you’re unable to locate the episode description on whichever platform you’re listening from Simply note the simply note the episode number and visit the co memo.com from there you can find the corresponding episode and then you’ll be able to access the audio video and transcripts you might also find any links that we reference during the episode so that you might be able to do your own research we will be referencing some links today if you’re not listening to this episode of the co memo on patreon then you’re listening to this episode later than our patrons to become a patron go to the memo.com SL patreon once again that’s thec memo.com patreon it’s a great way to support to support our show one of the best ways to support our show is absolutely free subscribe to follow our show or share it with your friends I hope that and I know that you’ll enjoy this episode of the Cole memo today is November 6th 2023 and today I’m joined uh by my friend and somebody that I look up to shellene title shellene would you uh go ahead and introduce yourself to my audience for folks that may not be aware of you this is uh your first time on the co memo yeah I was about to say I think this is my first time on the co memo so first of all congratulations on the new show thank you for having me thank you so um I am a founder and director of the parabola Center for Law and policy which is a non-profit nonpartisan Think Tank and we are focused on making sure that big corporations don’t take over and monopolize the Cannabis industry and really all drug Industries because I think all drugs should be legalized um I have about 20 years of experience with activism advocacy business law and other areas within marijuana legalization reform and I previously served as a cannabis regulator in the state of Massachusetts yeah and uh just a teaser uh and proof of your long-standing advocacy uh sorry I know we all hate pictures of oursel as a young person um but there you are as a young person uh fighting the good fight we’ll get back to that that’s a teaser for the the end of the episode uh once again wanted to plug the parabola Center uh it’s parabas center.com and once again folks that link will be in our uh podcast description go ahead and check it out there’s a lot of good information on the website and we’ll be discussing some of that information today shelene you recently uh the parabola Center recently shared two uh different papers um I guess before we get into that is there anything else you wanted to mention about the parabola Center I said Parabola center.com just anything else before we dive into the discussion today um just that we’re very narrowly focused there’s a lot of marijuana legalization organizations and I support all of them basically um but we’re the only one that is focused on I think this critical point of making sure that monopolization doesn’t occur so if that’s something you care about please uh keep following us yeah yeah absolutely and to that end which uh which paper do you think we want to start our discussion on today uh again we’ve got to the role of small business in the evolving cannabis industry and how to federally legalize cannabis without violating the Constitution or undermining equity and Justice where do you think you want to start today um they kind of go together so maybe I can introduce them together so this is kind of our harvest season because we spend the whole year working on these projects and then they’re finally out um and I’m very excited about these two because I think they make a very critical point um together so the small business paper which was published by the Ohio State University’s drug enforcement and policy Center um makes the point that small cannabis businesses exist first of all that they’re important and that they are worth saving so we kind of go through um I would actually say like contrary to the common impression out there um the Cannabis industry is dominated by small businesses currently that is a point that we thought it was really important to make because myself included we’re all very annoyed by the large msos that are coming in and you know very rapidly increasing their market share so we document that but at the same time compared to other legal Industries uh we have a lot of small businesses and so first we wanted to make that point then we also wanted to talk about why small businesses are good for the public and so we go through a lot of research and other Industries and then we end with like a quick short-term solution I would probably call it a Band-Aid solution but there’s nothing wrong with Band-Aids right if you’re if you are bleeding you need a Band-Aid so we kind of end with like what could pass right now in our opinion and then the other paper is more long-term and it’s more interested in the future and the point of it is we are going to lose the state markets if we don’t intentionally protect them in the transition to Federal National legalization and this is something that people don’t see because you can’t be concerned about something that you have haven’t seen yet right and so we want to make sure people see that threat and then we go through our blueprint for how to protect the state markets make them even better and save these small businesses that make up currently the majority of the industry yeah and uh you know thank you for the the high Strokes on that you know some of the numbers that were in uh the first paper to to back up some of what you were saying that I really really found interesting and you had a really good graph for it um and I think the numbers are broken down uh yeah in this this paragraph PR preceding it um but but this is a good look do you want to describe you mentioned this earlier but do you want to describe what we’re looking at here for for people yeah um and I want to quickly credit a couple of people um Bruce barcot who was my co-author on this paper and Eric Casey who ran the amazing newsletter Burn After Reading which has just ended um they both helped out with this so uh what it shows is how quickly the industry is consolidating so this rainbow of colors is the largest cannabis companies most people will recognize these and how their share grew between 2018 in 2022 so you can see that rate is concerning and if they continue to grow and consolidate at that rate we will see the problems that come with corporate concentration that we see in so many other Industries however it also makes an optimistic point which is that I was surprised and I think if you ask most people um in the industry who think about these issues they might also be surprised by just how small their share is in total whereas the orange rep represents small businesses so really this is ours to lose right and so when I talk about the policies that would protect small businesses it’s important to see we can still protect them we don’t have a situation where there’s a monopoly and we’re trying to break it up which is a whole different thing we’re trying to prevent a monopoly from happening in the first place and I would argue that’s much easier whoops I was muted sorry to your point uh caught myself there uh to your point I liked the the the numbers you shared about the beer industry so four multinational firms account for 78% of retail beer sales while thousands of small craft scale Brewers compete for slices of the remaining 21.4% so the P the picture you painted as you said is actually I was surprised too I was like oh wow this is a look how big this dut is still there’s a lot there’s a lot left to share right I mean that’s my Layman way of looking at it right exactly and you know we’ve chose the beer industry on purpose because I think there’s a perception out there that the beer industry is one that we should aspire to because we all know that craft breweries exist so we’re like why not you know let’s just copy and paste the beer rules and then we’ll have all these great breweries no that is actually the opposite of this chart right so the vast majority are owned by large companies and so I think if we aspire to that we are doing ourselves a major disservice we’re going to be destroying a lot of the small businesses we should be aiming way way higher absolutely absolutely and there was a part that stood out to me that really resonated with me at the beginning of the paper that I wanted to revisit for our listeners um I I like how you uh you know call out everybody but you also like even call out yourself you you say unfortunately research on the issue of small business remains sparse this deficiency begin begins with a lack of a universally accepted definition of small within the Cannabis industry concerns concerns regarding the rise of big marijuana corporations have been well documented and widely covered in both academic papers including our own I like that part and popular m media however considerably less attention has been directed to the flip side of this coin The Establishment and sustained economic wellbeing of small cannabis businesses within a legal well-regulated Market I really liked that paragraph so just had to read it that was somewhat inspired by our partners too because Parabola Center has about a 100 Partners most of them are small cannabis businesses and so I think a lot about just pointing out we’re not trying to create something and new we’re trying to support businesses that already exist and already provide you know all of these benefits to the community and the local economy and a lot of them are thriving yeah yeah and you know not I don’t I hope I’m not shifting gears too rapidly but or drawing a tangent where there isn’t one but one of my parts that the parts that stood out to me in the interstate uh paper the um rather the federal legalization paper I want to make sure I’m referring to this how to federally legalize cannabis yeah um I there was a part that stood out to me and of course it’s my reach because it mentions the Cole memo so of course I’m going to bring that up but it’s also theide I felt like it really related to I I feel like most people off the hip and I apologize I’m finding it now um in within your paper um most people off the hip would say that the way that these State economies have been set up are like to protect small businesses and everything else and that is a side effect I think you’ve you point out in this paper that for sure is a side effect but that is not the primary reason for these State markets it’s the coal memo right thank you for pointing that out because yeah I think that’s something that a lot of people have missed they might think that it’s protectionism or some other reason why we have all of these State markets but ironically it’s the federal government that has directed states to do this all but directed them to do it right and made made it clear you know if you let States um Import and Export that they’ll be at a greater risk and so we end up with the situation but at the same time it’s unconstitutional so it puts us in this very weird position where as soon as we have Federal legalization we can’t keep this unconstitutional system in place and we’re going to see rapid dramatic change and it’s really up to what we do now in terms of education and advocacy that decides whether that rapid change will be good or not yeah speaking of Education um which I think can can lead to advocacy I’m going to start I’m you’re turning me dangerous I’m going to start throwing around the dormant Commerce claws because part of what this uh paper explains is what that is I’ve heard people explain it for a while but and I’d like to think of myself as a policy wonk but but admittedly there are shortcomings in my knowledge and one of the things I felt like I really stepped out of this paper understanding is the dormant Commerce Clause and I really like that about the paper that that it explains that and do you mind breaking down just a little bit more clearly how it’s weird the co memo seems to be expressly advising states to do this yet doing this is in violation of could could be arguably in violation of the dormant com Commerce Clause can you break that down for folks so very briefly what you need to know for this context is that the dormant Commerce Clause is a legal doctrine that says if Congress is silent on on this issue States cannot discriminate against outof State businesses so what that means is all of the bills that have been proposed so far that would deschedule marijuana caoa states Reform Act the more uh Bill all of these would result in a situation where states can no longer prevent outof State businesses from selling in their state and so that would have enormous consequence it would wipe out State markets and the way that it would be prevented the other side of the dormant Commerce Clause is that if Congress is not silent um then Congress can essentially do whatever it wants and so whatever it decides with interstate commerce as long as it’s explicitly stated in the bill we can have the kind of intentional plan that we want now um I have to credit Tamar Todd who wrote the paper she is uh expert on these issues and she teaches a course on cannabis law and policy at UC Berkeley School of Law so she’s written a detailed explanation that would be really helpful if you want to understand it but just for the purposes of conversation if someone brings up the dormant Commerce Clause all you need to know is that Congress can overcome it by writing a bill and if they’re silent um it will end State markets as we know it yeah and I’m displaying the author uh it was Timar Todd is that how you say their name Tamar Todd thank you and she’s done a great job explaining it in this paper and by the way um don’t feel bad if you don’t know what the dormant Commerce class is because most people don’t even cannabis lawyers don’t it’s something you gloss over very quickly first year um but it’s become extremely important in this very specific situation where we have individual State markets that are essentially unconstitutional and so that will change rapidly perfect thank you shellene there was one part of the paper that stood out to me that I think is important to speak about it’s like the I mean to say it’s like the other side of it but it’s an interesting part of this conversation that again it just stood out to me most of this seems to be about protecting these State markets as they are and I think part of that it might surprise people and maybe I took I’m trying to find where in the paper I saw this so give I hope that you’re you know what I’m referring to but if not I’ll try to find the the part but it it mentions a part about how some states have grown too much and that they would actually benefit from being exp being able to export so I think that’s interesting how because I don’t know that most people would even think about it that way like Oregon for example like they would benefit from exporting their uh cannabis some would argue maybe um you know and some people might even like that little tag on there that just like you buy Georgia Peaches you might like Oregon cannabis right yeah yeah so Oregon Washington California have all explicitly made clear and in some cases even passed bills that they are ready to participate in interstate commerce and they’re small producers and cultivators of course they want the opportunity to start exporting and I mean they are exporting right like of course we shouldn’t prend like that’s not happening I could obviously go get Oregon cannabis 921 but what we want to um focus on is if our goal of legalization or one of the goals is fairness and competition uh for small businesses then we have to make sure we don’t have an overnight descheduling without any rules or any transition because what that would lead to is these companies that are waiting in the wings and Lobby for legalization such as Amazon Uber Philip Morris they would be able to use their existing resources and existing infrastructure to completely take over the industry and so those small cultivators on the west coast they would never have even a chance they wouldn’t even have an opportunity to participate and I’m saying this based on the way we’ve seen these companies act over the past two decades and the way that we’ve seen that our existing antitrust protection have not stopped them and so that’s why I say if we want a fair open market that allows everybody to participate we have to be intentional about that and specifically Congress has to put that into a bill when Federal legalization happens yeah yeah um and you brought up another thing that I feel like is the backdrop of the this particular Interstate paper let’s call it for now to shorthand um descheduling I’m like I would I think we both agree that descheduling is the move but I just thought it was interesting that the paper seems to suggest that that would that’s probably what’s going to happen descheduling and some sort of guardrails to prevent that nightmare scenario I just discre so incidentally um we just signed on to a letter to President Biden that was signed by more than 40 organizations maybe 39 um from all across the political Spectrum so there are libertarian organizations that make up the uh Freedom Alliance I think marijuana Freedom Alliance and then Parabola Center is part of a group called the marijuana Justice Coalition and in this letter to President Biden we ask him to deschedule to keep his promise but then we also make clear that we want him to support a wellth thought out plan for legalization that includes the plan for Interstate Commerce and it’s really important to outline that and as as I’ve as I said this is a bipartisan um you know popular coin to make because otherwise it’s just going to be too late you know and we can’t go back and be intentional uh once the market has already been dominated yeah yeah and I only brought it up just because of like like you said with with what Biden has done and I’m glad you put it the way you put it if he descheduled then he would uphold is promise I think most like you and I were disappointed to see the word reschedule instead of deschedule and uh can you just quickly say why why is reschedule a shortcoming why is he not meeting his campaign promise it’s pretty short and blunt yeah I mean he said he was going to decriminalize marijuana and he Bingo it doesn’t it doesn’t decriminalize rescheduling doesn’t decriminalize not only does it not decriminalize every medical use and adult use you know that’s currently legal under state law virtually all of it would remain illegal but then at the same time it would make this strange um Pathway to federally legal marijuana for the first time but that would only be open to essentially pharmaceutical companies who could afford the FDA approval process and that just it’s totally contradictory to the way that we all use and sell marijuana currently so it it just it makes no sense yeah yeah absolutely um one thing that I really liked about the paper just kind of jumping around is that it does break down some of the leading reform proposals uh for to end cannabis prohibition um and I’m just going to display my screen here really quick one thing I did not know about the states Reform Act was that it would eliminate Federal penalties Federal Criminal criminal penalties for cannabis but only in states that legalize and regulate cannabis under state law it just seems crazy you know that that it’s got that shortcoming to it well it would be very difficult to um legalize in states that want to keep it criminalized because um states are pretty much free to use their own law enforcement to um enforce you know any criminal law so and that’s something I run into a lot with homeg grow unfortunately we’re trying to figure out a way where everybody in the country would have a right to Hom grow but it’s difficult for states to you know to take away that That Power from States so uh it is a shortcoming I wouldn’t blame the SR sponsors for that um I would say between the two bills that we chose to highlight CAA and Sr um which are Democrat and Republican sponsored respectively I think they’re more similar than they are different and I think that they’re both good thoughtful bills that are a lot more detailed than the previous bills um but they both have this gigantic hole where they have not thought about interstate commerce or included any kind of plan yeah yeah and I I totally get what you mean by way of uh like they like the feds wouldn’t be able to change the state law it just the way I read it maybe I’m misreading it but even in the CAO way so a allow Federal enforcement in states that choose to retain State prohibition it’s like why would Federal enforcement be like I get what you mean where like states can decide to direct their you know resources towards the enforcement of that if they so choose but the way I’m reading it and unless I’m misreading it it’s like Federal like that’s what I don’t understand about it but yeah I mean part of that yeah I mean maybe you’re right it should be described as a shortcoming but I think part of that is the goal that if they want to bring on Republican sponsors they have to be very um careful about respecting State’s rights and I think it leads to like generally a similar result but um you’re right like this should be more it’s definitely better to go as far as you can from the federal level in terms of protecting people’s rights to to use the drugs sure um but I do to your point I do like that both the Republican and Democrat uh proposal Democratic proposal include the words remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act Des schedu cannabis because again that’s that’s the move right yeah no question that’s the move that nothing that doesn’t contain that is is valuable yeah well um end right any any uh any notes that that we didn’t hit on these papers I do have a thought that that came up that’s that’s somewhat related to these papers but it’s more big picture so I wanted to give you the space uh on on both of these papers in case there was something important out of either one of them or both of them that that we haven’t covered so far any anything yeah um I guess I I set up the solution but I didn’t actually describe the solution so the whole point of the paper is to call for a solution where the gradual plan to interstate commerce is to allow social equ businesses small businesses and worker owned businesses to engage in interstate commerce first so what that means is um before Amazon Philip Morris you know Altria uh Uber before they can get into um the market the interstate Market uh we would allow these small cultivators we were talking about on the west coast um to be able to export and then here in Massachusetts for example or New York you would be able to have the state social Equity businesses deliver to you or retail to you um and of course vice versa but I expect that it would go in that direction because that’s where the supply is and by doing that we make sure that our um businesses that most people value and want to promote our mom and pop shops um that they have a head start advantage and you can see if you do the opposite what happens in all of our states virtually we’ve given the larger businesses Head Start advantage and small businesses have had a very difficult time catching up to that um but the larger businesses they’re not actually large right so they are not so large that they engage in the kind of behaviors that Amazon and and Philip Morris engage in and so by holding that part off um we’re able to give our small businesses a leg up we’re able to encourage worker owned businesses which are arguably just a better model in general and we’re able to collect data on interstate commerce because for sure there are things that will happen after Federal legalization that none of us can foresee and by collecting data and watching it carefully um we’ll be able to make adjustments over time and so we present that as a solution and a thoughtful plan with sample language in the paper and our goal is that people will read it and people will add their own tws to it or they will you know argue their critiques of it and put forth their own thoughtful plans of Interstate Commerce and that is how we’ll end up with a good model for policy because right now as far as I know that conversation isn’t even happening it’s just interstate commerce or not interstate commerce and that’s not the conversation of course we’re going to end up with interstate commerce the question is how do we end up there yeah yeah um and I just want to say you know am I accur I think I use this picture probably about every time we talk about monopolies am I accurate this is another visual representation of what we’re trying to prevent happening yeah that’s it that’s it and um box Brown has excellent versions of the same thing in the Cannabis industry and all the different brands that belong to the biggest companies yeah yeah yeah and um you know just kind of stepping away from from these papers thank you by the way for for mentioning yeah you you even have I’ll display draft language that people should consider so thank you for closing out that that conversation by mentioning that there you do have proposals it’s not just talking about the problem you do have proposals for these issues so um probably should have led with that but now people know that’s where it is so check it out I mean I think if people know who you are they know that that you you come with Solutions you describe an issue you come with Solutions speaking of that uh you know in the past so we’ve talked and I always reference a different paper that you’ve written that I’m going to just go ahead and plug as I always do bigger is not better um preventing monopolies in the National cannabis Market this is also published by the Ohio State University and um we’ve talked about this a number of times but I am curious just because it’s mentioned you know in this paper vaguely um and maybe it’s just me connecting dots because of I’m Shell Shocked in Illinois um but uh it seems like one of the main concerns with Illinois is that that we do limit the number of licenses to prevent like price compression and the the justification our governor uses is that uh he’s limited licenses to create a more Equitable Equitable market and ensure those people are profitable look I think we can agree as you point out in those papers that the the um the criteria in which we’ve set up these State programs does lead to a more diverse set of licenses but my question with you and I I’m I didn’t necessarily plan to ask you this today but it just came up as I was rereading these papers how do you think we like what like I feel like an argument for license limitations on licenses is constantly well how can we make any money if everybody can get a license and it’s like I don’t feel like that’s a a justification for keeping people out and I think you’d agree but I’m just curious how would you respond to that because I’m getting it all the time here in Illinois I mean it’s I it’s hard for me to like respect that question because I don’t really care if you’re making money or not or how much you’re making right like if you have a good product and consumers like it that’s how you’re going to make money not because you know the government is giving you some special license and not giving it to other people like that’s just it’s ridiculous to expect that kind of protection yeah and I I say the same thing in Massachusetts and uh there is a push here by small businesses and social Equity businesses who feel that yeah there’s too many licenses being granted up and it’s not fair to them and so you know I don’t want to dismiss it but also you will never survive Federal legalization you know if you expect that other licenses can’t be given out now at the same time small businesses should have access to say SBA protections um and of course I’m advocating strongly for ahead start for small businesses so there are um benefits that they should have and we should have a Level Playing Field but I don’t think excluding people from H from applying for licenses period is is fair to anybody yeah and for folks that don’t know one of the policy proposals that that uh I constantly point to out of your paper that I was kind of loosely referencing is do not cap the number of business Li do not cap the number of business licenses available in total but limit how much of a market any one person or entity May control Illinois also has that part in our law and I like that part and actually I recently spoke to sh uh somebody shellene who confident I was explaining to them that I that I like that part out of our law and they confidently told me well Cole that’s going away the the big operators in Illinois are going to get more licenses and I was like well I just know I know that you just set me you just triggered shellene and I that’s accurate because it’s bigger right isn’t it 10 licenses in Illinois yeah so we have a maximum you can have a maximum of 10 retail stores and three cultivation licenses oh which I think is yeah I think that’s good especially when you consider you look at some of the big operators the three that they have are huge you’re talking 600,000 square feet in total across three licenses right um so yeah that’s about triple as our limits in Massachusetts so wow that’s that’s plenty that’s a shame if there’s a and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them be lifted in a state before either so that’s that’s a unique situation and troubling one yeah yeah no I I definitely the reason I’m bringing it up now is because of the confidence in which this person said it on my show folks if you saw you know what I’m talking about I don’t mean to like point fingers or anything but um yeah the confidence in which it was said but most importantly the impact it would have on our Market again those are license limitations that I support limiting a number you know limiting how much of a market any one person or entity May control so yeah yeah one more thing I would point out about that Monopoly paper of mine um which I think is the most popular paper I’ve ever written is um it is actually a rational question to say why shouldn’t we just allow a few companies to control the market doesn’t that mean that things might be easier to regulate or as a consumer would I have lower prices um I think that’s a fair question but the answer is just um no that’s not how it has turned out and so that’s something we explain in the paper um why monopolies are bad essentially and especially in the context of drugs and so if people are interested or if you know if they have that question which I’ve been treating as an assumption so far um that might be a good paper and honestly I could go on for so much longer because we have citizens united we have super packs we have no class action lawsuits um we have no effective anti- trust protections like in the last 20 years I think it’s become even more clear why we can’t allow unchecked corporate control um but I just want to acknowledge that that is a question that people might have before I get into other things shellene what other projects do you have uh coming up at the parabola Center so we have an entirely new for us project coming up so so far we’ focused on written materials papers cheat sheets app EDS we are shifting to a video series so it’s a series of interviews that we held with people from all around the world from um indigenous cannabis farmers in Africa to economic experts in London um Global experts on cannabis and we asked them questions about cannabis legalization how it should be structured and who it should benefit and then we paired that with a survey research project of um ordinary people across the us and we asked them things like whom do you trust when it comes to cannabis and legalization and who do you think it should benefit to my knowledge these questions have not been asked so for us it was really original and interesting work so we’ll be releasing that and I hope it demonstrates to people um that these are important questions and we should not be dismissing them or seeding control to corporations we should be handling them together as a society can people stay tuned for that on the parabola center.com yes and also we’re Parabola Center on Instagram LinkedIn and Twitter and we’re also starting a Tik Tok account to release these videos so I hope people watch them and find them helpful very very cool very cool well um again I just wanted to close out with some random conversation and touch a little bit on hash Wednesday which I think is important to to to speak about um but before we get to that I had one question that I thought was really um good I recently had Jordan Davidson on my podcast and um for folks that don’t know about Jordan Davidson he works for smart approaches to marijuana they argue that uh you know cannabis legalization is just propping up another industry that’s addiction for profit and I asked him because I recently spoke to different attorneys some that even gave speeches at you know some of it was interesting it was at a training center for one of these big cannabis companies and I asked an attorney mind you we’re speaking in a one of these big cannabis like a venue for one of these big cannabis companies I said do you think that the complete decriminalization of cannabis like why do you think that companies are not more supportive of that vocally uh by way of you know supporting hom grow or ending possession limits or you know I I listed off a few different factors and this attorney who’s who’s pretty well known in Illinois surprisingly said I I wasn’t surprised by the answer but I was surprised that he said it in the venue we were in again mind you we’re in one of these big this big cannabis company hosted and he said these cannabis companies see that as being against their profit motive if they can’t you know if they limit you to the amount that you have to buy then you have to come back for more if they don’t allow you to grow it of course you have to come come to them for it you know all these different things and so I felt like an interesting hole in because I asked Jordan it seems like you and cannabis companies agree that we should just have like just slight decriminalization and anything above that still is met with criminal penalties like it seems like you guys are actually on the same page about that and I wondered why if they’re claiming it’s a DI you know addiction for profit but they say that’s against their profit motive so isn’t that a hole in the whole you know argument if if the complete decriminalization doesn’t benefit them is is it legalization for profit I’m just curious I know I kind of just went all over the place and I was even using my hand to to signify that do you think that that I’m coming from like a legitimate place here like or am I just high that is so fascinating that’s actually why I love your show by the way because you don’t have an agenda other than examining these questions truthfully and you draw connections that I think most people don’t draw so um that’s so fascinating I I I do agree and actually it brings to mind like a big concern that I have which is the idea of um a Crackdown on the illicit market and we have we uh at Parabola Center we won’t partner with organizations that don’t share our values and one of them is people who call for a criminal Crackdown on the elicit Market I meaning arrests not just shutting down the elicit stores and it’s because I think that yeah this is something that prohibitionists and companies have in common which is when they don’t support decriminalization as a concept they want to be the only ones that can sell it and everyone else should be criminally penalized and when you see something like rescheduling coming down the pipeline that’s when it gets really scary because that’s when we might see people like Jordan and his peers and then fizer and their peers saying hey here’s this one product that we constructed that’s legal and every other user and every other seller needs to be arrested um that’s arguably worse than what we have now yeah yeah well said I just again it just I think it’s funny that when you look at states that more closely mirror what I think is actual legalization I say that in air quotes let’s let’s say Michigan for example and the reason I say that is because it’s the the laws are pretty liberal and the prices are pretty compassionate as a result of the laws being liberal and and it’s funny because people in Illinois will point to Michigan as being a failure they’re like look at the price compression over there look how hard it is to be a operator I’m just like you know as a consumer I don’t really you just it’s falling on deaf ears almost you know like I I don’t wish hardship on anybody I wish the best for everybody you know what I mean but at the end of the day at least you know what you’re signing up for and you have the ability to participate versus systems like ours where you are literally Limited in the criminal enforcement the the enforcement mechanism is the criminal law you know so absolutely yeah for us it was Oregon was the boogeyman when we were building our Market um people kept repeating we don’t want this to look like Oregon the prices are so low there’s an over Supply you know there’s a risk of diversion I was like well consumers seem pretty happy in Oregon and I don’t think it’s a big problem yeah I agree well said well um shene let’s close out with some hash Wednesday sound good let’s yeah when did you uh when did you come to uiu and and how and why like what were you coming to study so I was there from 2000 to 2008 I got my undergrad degree in accounting my grad degree in accounting and then my law degree and uh actually it was the only school I got into um because I wrote an essay my college essay this is kind of a side note but I enjoy telling people this so I wrote my side note um excuse me I wrote my essay on Coline shootings because they had just happened when I was playing for college and I wrote that uh the way we were responding to them was a terrible over uh overreaction and that we weren’t addressing the root causes and that we were just going to see more shootings and I was completely right um but my parents guidance counselor everybody told me you cannot write this you’re never going to get into college and that I I got rejected from every school except you ofi so um that was how I ended up there and I got involved in ssdp as a sophomore my roommate Danielle Schumacher headed up the um ssdp normal chapter and I was just like going along the ride for fun how did you end up with Danielle as a roommate it’s cool roommate is it just by chance this why I’m asking we went to boarding school together oh okay Illinois Math and Science Academy yeah so we had already been roommates gotcha gotcha I was like man you you ended up with a [ __ ] cool roommate um I agree when and how did you first hear about hash Wednesday and don’t please don’t say what hash Wednesday is I’m just yet I’ll ask you that but I’m just curious when did you hear about it and how did you hear about it first um I don’t fully remember but it must have been from Danielle and I heard about it as something really cool that had been happening and that we needed to revive and if you could what is Hash Wednesday um maybe everybody’s going to give you a different definition but in my day so like 2003 or so it was an act of Civil Disobedience it was a way to raise awareness to the criminalization of marijuana and the fact that we could change it and it was just an opportunity to have fun um I asked my husband what he remembers about those days and all he remembered was that he smoked a joint on the quad and that it was so cool I think that’s what it is for a lot of people yeah yeah a liberating moment um I feel like that’s also what I would recall and the only thing I would recall if uh if I were him so any anyways uh showing some pictures again I I don’t know uh of course this one you’re in the background I don’t know how many others you will be um oh please bring back good memories yeah looks like there were guitar and the guy dressed up as a joint um while I’m flipping through these do you mind sharing some stories maybe anything you might remember anything that stands out I do remember that we built like a 40 foot paper mâché joint I shouldn’t say we I was lazy but the other people built it I remember we had a celebrity pothead lookalike contest I remember that I was really impressed that uh the cops were completely hands off you know and I had not experienced something like that before for it was around the same time as the Iraq war protest so um it was kind of interesting to be involved in both of those I would say this was a lot more fun and I would say you know we got lifelong uh supporters of the movement like people now you know 20 years later they’re like you know scientists or you know whatever they’re doing and they still support Parabola Center and those seeds were planted on hash Wednesday and that’s something that you can’t overstate you know when something is fun with your friends and you’re enjoying yourself that’s how you get people to the movement it’s not with like you know bullet point arguments or you know winning some kind of debate it’s through having fun and making people feel connected yeah yeah well said yeah I’m just flipping through some of these pictures folks for show uh we’ll be releasing this entire photo album uh in the future here uh this is a cool thing that out of context I had no idea what was going on um there was a joint rolling contest but it was with like uh spices right yeah correction it was an oregano cigarette rolling contest yeah thank you thank you that’s what it was yeah but but again without context when I look at these images I see a green leafy substance and papers and PE so it was effective is my point definitely it was it was a tongue and cheek uh oregano cigarette rolling contest and some people were really good yeah I was taught how to roll a joint by Ed roseen all personally um and I still I can’t do it to save my life but I’m really proud that that’s how I learned I was goingon to say that’s a freaking awesome story but yeah Danielle mentioned that that some people like really really took off with this joint rolling contest it was like no contest yeah some people were really good some people were struggling yeah um but yeah any other uh notable moments I thought that was cool to to hear you say that it just felt liberating when I look at these photos especially somebody that spends a lot of their time in Champagne it just gives me this this feeling that I can’t exactly vocalize and maybe that’s the same for you maybe you won’t be able to vocalize it but if you could TR if you can um what do you remember feeling about those days I remember feeling a profound connection to everyone who had already been in that fight because I knew that hash Wednesday had been going on since the 70s and you know when you’re young like to me the 70s might as well have been Gandhi and Martin Luther King right it’s like history hash Wednesday of history and they were on the same quad doing the same thing and I had no idea that legalization was right around the corner you know I thought maybe sometime in my lifetime I’ll get to see it or maybe my kids will be on this quad doing the same thing you know but I think that sense of connection and belonging is undoubtedly what brings about change yeah and speaking of bringing about change you know just to close on this I thought one of the things that was really cool about this and I don’t know if you helped with this but these displays that would show the impact of the War on Drugs yeah that was something that I don’t think most college students were aware of you know and I’ll just use myself as an example when I started out I thought like this is [ __ ] me and my friends you know we should be able to you know not be risk we shouldn’t have to risk arrest but then over time I came to understand like how massively privileged we were or and how awful the racial disparity in Illinois was in particular and so yeah no I did not put this together but I think the people who did um they were really focused on showing individual stories rightfully so and I think they changed a lot of Minds yeah I just thought it was cool because it was like before the internet um you know so it took a lot of effort to to do that here you are with your fake joint um with Danielle um it just took so much effort I cannot say enough about before the internet like the way that protests felt it was completely different and it was just but then you know at the same time it was drug policy I don’t know if people know this it was Cannabis policy people who were the first to use the internet as a movement and to create political change and that is also really special yeah actually part of this hash Wednesday series I found uh this person named Joshua Salone was using email in the 90s before email was really even like he was literally using it by virtue of the fact that he was at the University of Illinois and he was like ve very privileged in that access yeah oh man kudos to you for documenting this because we can’t let that stories like that get lost to history that’s amazing yeah oh I remember that I remember that I totally thought he was gonna fall out of the tree that’s a hand painted sign on hemp I was about to ask you yeah that looked hand painted so super cool super cool well um any other thoughts to just close this thread on hash Wednesday I you know I’m so thankful that that folks like you did even if you didn’t really fully recognize what you were doing at the time that you did put yourself out there like that like yeah it’s huge thanks for documenting this and for bringing back all the the H Wednesday memories throughout the year that’s really special yeah yeah and one thought that I wrote down uh just that I wanted to to end on with regard to this is I do think that that you kept a flame alive from those folks that that were you know fighting for it and I think that you almost it’s like you kept the flame alive long enough for a new generation to kind of dilute the old guards mentality do you follow what do you mean by that say more like you know the as you said the 70s the 80s and 90s those seems seem like lifetimes ago I was born in I’m not going to say it but I like to say now I was born in the 1900s because the 2000s are just so [ __ ] crazy now you know so it does it really feels like a lifetime ago and I guess what I’m saying is I feel like these movements started in this 60s 70s 80s and we’ve kept the flame alive you’ve kept the flame alive and I just wanted to thank you for that like I feel like that has deluded the old guard’s mentality and to sorry I feel like I still haven’t answered your question to to answer that it’s just like attitudes have changed people that old mentality of drugs are bad like that’s not the operating attitude anymore for the most part so and that’s it should be well you’re keeping the flame live too and you’re actually like transforming it or you’re you know you’re evolving it into what it needs to get into um question is Hash Wednesday still going on no not yet not yet okay I got it I wanna I want to bring it back that’d be cool you know that’d be really cool but no uh actually wcia made a report a few years ago and I can send it to you after we’re done here that showed hash Wednesday in the 70s but the last thing that they mentioned is that you’d be hardpressed to see hash Wednesday go on today because of the fact that you know University of Illinois smoke free campus but also it just hasn’t happened since I think about your time shelene I think just shortly after you left is when it stopped I I can’t I don’t want to say that exactly but that I’m having trouble finding any evidence of it happening after you guys had left so I believe that that logic is very funny it’s a smoke freak and though we were allowed to we were doing in the 70s right isn’t that funny well if you um if you bring it back let me know I will be there probably Danielle probably Rob probably all my friends will come back for that would be so cool that would be so cool yeah we’ll have to make that happen so shellene um it’s been a pleasure to speak to you as always uh folks once again we’ll have the papers and uh website linked in the episode description uh any parting thoughts shelene or you think we cover to um this is just a very minor thing but people often ask me um how they can help Parabola Center if they aren’t able to volunteer and if they aren’t able to offer donations so one thing that’s really helpful is if you just download the papers especially the ones that are on external uh research platforms like the small business one because then it helps me because then I have to go and make a case for the next paper and I want to make it free and open to the public then I can say hey this is something that people really care about like look how many people read it um and it’s just helpful so if you download the small business paper and have your friends download it I really appreciate it yeah so folks use those links to not only read the papers but download them to help support uh yeah what I think is actually going to result in substantive reform in uh drug policy so thank you all I will see you on the next episode of the Cole memo take care